All her efforts to soothe had merely exasperated him; and there were days when her presence worked him into a fit of nervous irritability.

After four months of marriage prolonged boredom had replaced the passionate tenderness of their honeymoon.

Why this should be so she was too well-balanced emotionally to understand.
She saw only the outward evidences of change, of gradual disillusionment; and though at first she wept a little while she wondered, she ended by drying her tears and attributing his casual indifference and his explosive violence alike to some obscure disturbing condition of health.

Every evening, except when there were guests, he spent at his club; he came to bed late, and his waking hour was filled with complaint about the number and the size of his bills.

He treated these bills as if they had been gratuitous insults, as if they had leaped, without reason for being, out of a malign world to assail him.
As yet Gabriella had bought nothing; and she dreaded the time when her clothes would wear out beyond the hope of repairing, and she should be obliged to add another bill to the growing pile under the silver paper weight on the little white and gold desk.
But in the last few weeks even this anxiety had faded from her mind, for the miracle of life which stirred in her body had diffused its golden halo around every trivial incident of her existence.